Kentucky Wildcats wide receiver Nic Anderson left Saturday night’s 35-34 overtime win over the No. 10 LSU Tigers in the second half and did not return.
UK radio’s Dick Gabriel reported during the game that Anderson was being evaluated for a shoulder injury and was questionable to return, though the fifth-year senior never came back. There’s no official word yet on how serious it is. Stein will likely give an update at his Tuesday press conference.
The timing is rough, because Anderson had just started
to look like the receiver Kentucky hoped it was getting.
Through his first four games as a Wildcat, Anderson had four catches for 40 yards. Then he went to Columbia and broke out with five catches for 80 yards and his first touchdown in Kentucky blue in the 35-34 overtime win at South Carolina. That game also pushed him past 1,000 career receiving yards. It was his first touchdown since September 2025.
He stayed hot early against LSU and led all Kentucky receivers at halftime with three catches for 29 yards. The LSU game was personal, too. Anderson spent last season in Baton Rouge, playing for the same staff that included current Kentucky offensive coordinator Joe Sloan.
The bigger storyline is where Kentucky goes next.
Before LSU, Anderson spent three years at Oklahoma, where he stuck with the program through the coaching change from Lincoln Riley to Brent Venables. His redshirt freshman season in 2023 was a breakout. He caught 38 passes for 798 yards and 10 touchdowns, averaging a team-high 21 yards per catch. Kentucky travels to Norman on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, SEC Network), and his homecoming is now in question.
If Anderson can’t go, this would be a familiar and frustrating chapter for him. A quad injury limited him to one game at Oklahoma in 2024. At LSU, he was hurt in a car accident the summer before the season and then suffered a knee injury against Alabama in November that ended his year.
Kentucky handled him carefully all offseason, holding him out of the spring game and the start of fall camp, and it had been paying off.
Anderson wasn’t the only Wildcat who gave the Kroger Field crowd a scare. Running back CJ Baxter and linebacker Bo Barnes both went down with injuries in the second half but returned right away. Baxter had been the star of the first half, ripping off a career-long 77-yard run on Kentucky’s first offensive snap and posting 122 rushing yards and a touchdown before halftime.
Barnes’ quick return was a relief for a linebacker room Stein called thin heading into the game. The former Sooner is also poised for a return to Norman this week after spending four seasons at Oklahoma before opting to spend his final season in Lexington.
Expect more clarity on Anderson’s status Tuesday. Kentucky is a slight underdog at Oklahoma, which is coming off a walk-off win over No. 1 Texas. With the Wildcats now in the playoff conversation, the timing of Anderson’s injury matters a lot.
